The theme of this event is Illustrating Conflict. This is a FREE event; bookings is available HERE.

This event is run in conjunction with ArtsFest at the University of Wolverhampton.

PROGRAMME

ANN MURRAY, The No More War movement and the Graphic Work of Käthe Kollwitz and her Contemporaries in post-World War I Germany. This talk explores the graphic work of Käthe Kollwitz and associated artists in the context of the German, and later, international No More War movement in the post-World War I years, where it was deployed in popular print media, both in Germany and internationally, as antimilitarist activism. If Kollwitz remains among the best known of German pacifist artists directly involved with the No More War movement, she was joined by some of her contemporaries, such as Georg Kretzschmar and Frans Masereel, in deploying her graphic work in support of antiwar activism. These artists were connected to some of the leading antiwar voices of the time, including French Nobel Prize-winning writer Romain Rolland, Ernst Friedrich, the author of Krieg dem Kriege! [War against War!] and the founder of War Resisters’ International, Helene Stöcker. This talk looks at how these artists engaged their work in the production of posters, periodicals, and multilingual publications, as well as the production of inexpensive editions of their prints, to reach beyond the confines of gallery walls in their support of the movement. ANN is an independent art historian based in Cork, Ireland. She gained a PhD at University College Cork in 2018, where she lectured from 2010 to 2019. Her research focuses on the impact of war in visual culture since 1800, specifically the relationships between art, war, politics and memorialisation. Overall, her work insists on the centrality of art as a nexus of thought linking war, politics and society. She recently edited Constructing the Memory of War in Visual Culture since 1914: The Eye on War (Routledge, 2018), which traced how art in the last hundred years has interrogated the manner in which war is memorialised. Her book, Otto Dix and the Memorialization of War in German Visual Culture 1914-1936 (Bloomsbury, 2023), part-funded by the Royal Irish Academy, will be published in late 2023.

ANTHONY QUINN, War news was good news for magazines. Reporting on Britain’s battles helped sell the new illustrated magazines from the 1840s, and spawned several titles dedicated to covering conflict. To meet demand, publishers had to face artistic and production challenges in depicting explosions, smoke and movement. It would be a similar story in the Great War. A dozen titles were launched within weeks. Better ways of reproducing photographs allied to photogravure presses gripped the public. Furthermore, servicemen became a source of cartoons, stories and photographs. This talk will focus on three examples of the coverage. The first is the use of photographs and illustration around an air raid that killed three people and damaged one of the Sphinxes alongside Cleopatra’s Needle in London. The second example is the bombing of the Odhams printing works in Long Acre – the worst homeland incident of the war with 38 people killed – and the use of official photographs. The third element is the provision of content by servicemen and two military cartoonists who became household names. ANTHONY is a freelance journalist, author and lecturer. He founded Magforum.com, the magazine history website, in 2001. He has been group editor at BBC Magazines, head of publishing at West Herts College in Watford, and chief sub-editor at the Financial Times. His books include the section on Magazines since 1914 in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol 7 (CUP, 2019), A History of British Magazine Design (V&A, 2015) and Kitchener Wants You: The Man, the Poster and the Legacy with Martyn Thatcher (Uniform Press, 2016). He holds a BSc (Hons) degree in engineering science from Warwick University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.